kitewithfish

So, after my vacation I hunkered down - I was having a rough time getting up the energy to reach out to people. I fell out of posting here, I fell out of being involved in much of anything, and while I was still in contact with close friends on some small discords and text threads, I didn't quite realize how very out of the loop I was. Unless something was a scheduled in advance and recurring, I didn't do it. I was in Bare Minimum Mode.

Some of that seems to have lifted a bit - I realized around the same time that a number of other people in my life were also talking about having struggles - that hitting/passing the six-month crisis mark was has been rough for a lot of people. Reading this thread by Dr. Aisha Ahmad kind of put things into focus: "I *always* hit a wall 6 months into a tough assignment in a disaster zone. The desire to "get away" or "make it stop" is intense." (It's a good and hopeful thread, I promise, give it a read.)

Anyhoo, I have started to pull out of it, I think. Work still seems a little pointless, but I knocked a few things off my to-do list that have been lingering there like zombies for a while, so that's motivating me to do more on that front.

I read Naomi Novik's A DEADLY EDUCATION over last weekend, and that was kind of the thing that really kicked me out of my funk. Partially because I follow a podcast called Be The Serpent, and they did a whole episode talking about magical schools with Novik as a guest star, so I got to listen to the author talk about what had got her excited about it. I might to a larger post about it on its own - strong recommend, some caveats, and reading other reviews that have made me think about elements that I didn't catch the first time.

But one thing I really liked as, in the last third of the book, the main character realizes she can move out of a position of being an outsider and afraid and evaluating the people around her as a potential threats, to trusting some select people to be worth keeping, as people who will have her back. And that felt like a mindset that I really, really recognized from high school and is often my default stage when I'm low on energy - thinking of people as a potential source of demands rather than actual friends. It's shit, and I'm glad to be a bit further out of it.